


down these halls, these holy walls, ghosts of memories track us down

by inklovish



Category: Anne with an E (TV)
Genre: Anne and Gilbert, Avonlea - Freeform, Avonlea Story Club, Because he's a tired and confused teenage boy, F/M, Gilbert explores, Gilbert wandering, This Is STUPID
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-27
Updated: 2019-12-27
Packaged: 2021-02-17 22:36:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21984118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inklovish/pseuds/inklovish
Summary: Women are not made whole by men,she had written and hit the point perfectly—the memory sparks a soft smile and the same feeling of overflowing triumph from that day that he lets wash over him—and yet he'd be willing to propose a gender-switch, for women are certainly not made whole by men but Gilbert knows that without her in his life he would have not even a life to begin with.or,Gilbert takes a walk down memory lane.
Relationships: Billy Andrews & Moody Spurgeon, Cole Mackenzie & Anne Shirley, Diana Barry & Anne Shirley, Gilbert Blythe & Anne Shirley, Gilbert Blythe & Mary Lacroix, Gilbert Blythe & Winifred Rose, Gilbert Blythe/Anne Shirley, Gilbert Blythe/Winifred Rose
Comments: 3
Kudos: 99





	down these halls, these holy walls, ghosts of memories track us down

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as a kind-of accompaniment to my previous Shirbert fic, which is a soulmate au, and was honestly really fun to write even if it turned into something that is overall just Gilbert being sad and reminiscing? I've been calling it the culmination of stress and nostalgia the holidays that have brought to the introvert writer that is me, but I'm not sure exactly what it is and I know I can do better but am too tired right now—anyway IT'S SOMETHING FOR YOU GUYS TO READ WHILE WE CRY OVER AWAE'S CANCELLATION AND CURSE NETFLIX'S NAME.
> 
> I realize now that Gilbert is probably at least smart enough to know when he's being an ass but alas, let's save the angst and Guilty Gil for another fic :)
> 
> The title is partly from Half Light by BANNERS.
> 
> Disclaimer: Gilbert (sadly) does not walk down Lover's Lane (White Way of Delight? that one's lengthy uhh I forgot what it's called) in this fic; timelines are probably skewed because my mind does not precede me and "me" does not go that far (oof). Also I forgot a lot of the episode and where Gilbert went in Avonlea so uhh here have him wandering I guess?

Gilbert blinks up into the bright sky and shakes his head, feeling fatigue press at his shoulders and head—they've been re-constructing the schoolhouse for hours now on a clear, rather sunny day, and he suspects he'll be sent home to the Blythe-Lacroix farm to rest sooner than later; Mr. Barry had already spoken to him about his exhausted appearance once, and Gilbert doesn't think it'll be a subtle reminder the next time he does. 

He walks swiftly over to the stream to drink from his bottle of water, trying to shake off the feeling of a green gaze fixed resolutely on him in an open-windowed schoolhouse and the touch of a hand at tea, and spots something in the grass as he straightens again.

The signs from their monumental revolt— _a human right,_ the ones he picks up read—no worse for wear than they might have been once, sitting whereever Anne might have found them. They mark a revolution of the students of Avonlea, one that Gilbert doubts anyone at this construction site could really disapprove of, and had brought with it a wave of loud indignance which Gilbert is proud of even if it hadn't brought an equally triumphant victory.

For a moment more he's able to keep their short-lived victory in mind before the two young women in his head begin to appear again, and Gilbert groans as he catches sight of Anne—young and hasty, rushing towards the schoolhouse steps—with his younger self just a step behind her.

Perhaps he _is_ fatigued enough to head back, he muses as he puts down the signs and Moody catches and engages him in brief conversation.

"Well—you've chosen a wife, haven't you?"

"It doesn't quite work like that," he says, voice level.

"It must me daunting," Moody continues on still. "You're determining the course of your entire life."

(" _Winnifred is a lucky gal,"_ Anne said, the first to break away again after all these years, her expression closing in a way that she'd never done to Gilbert before—and what does _Winnie_ have to do with any of what is between Anne and Gilbert, she's been there for months and Anne has been here, present, for _years—_ )

"I'm aware," Gilbert answers, blinks when Billy approaches to shift his attention to Moody, and takes the chance to turn and walk away without speaking another word.

He falters in his steps when he feels the ghost of her hand in his, hears the banjo plucking and feels the sunlight coming in through wide-open windows. Anne, he knows, is able to recover from those short flashes of nightmarish memories with the blink of an eye now, and he hasn't seen her stop completely since the day where she might have—the day she'd been frozen in fright from Billy's hurtful words. Anne is stubborn and determined, always in motion and he doesn't understand how she could ever fall in love with someone who—who stops with every step, every heartstaggering conclusion, where she would always pick herself up and keep going.

She hasn't _fallen,_ he reminds himself. Instead of a straight answer on the night he'd asked she'd gone for one that was jumbled and far less sane than he'd expected, though it was still answer enough that she avoided really responding to it—but if he really freed himself from the choices and stepped away from the opportunities of leaving Avonlea for a place that he doesn't know better than he does the Rose family as a whole...

But they've brought so much to him, these people of the world—an opportunity for a better life and career than the options he'd been given before. A chance at a prestigous college, and everything that comes after, a _wife_ —he can't even begin to comprehend everything that they offer. He questions constantly whether he really has a choice or not.

Gilbert finds himself in a familiar field and peers around himself, unable to pinpoint the exact place but hearing her voice, fierce and reassuring and just the way it always is.

("You will be a _wonderful_ doctor, Gilbert," she tells him, her eyes blazing, freckles scattered—)

He brushes a hand over the long grass and shuts his eyes in an attempt to hear it again, and hears something familiar but muted, as if from a distant memory.

(She seems to draw herself up on a breath before, "I owe you an apology."

"No, you shouldn't—I was rude—"

"But it was my fault," she presses crisply, her lips twisting; Gilbert brings their witty banter to an end.

"Can we _please_ stop arguing?"

"Can you please stop contradicting me?" she shoots back instead of what he'd expected, her voice sharp but playful, and her tapping hand comes to rest in the crook of her elbow.

Gilbert feels his mouth twitch with a smile he attempts to hide—he's _missed_ this.

"Come home someday," Anne had said outside in the snow, her voice soft and drifting, and distantly Gilbert remembers thinking that he doesn't have a home anymore— _home_ is a four-letter word that amounts to the people around him and how much they care about each other, it could be a town, it could be two people, but he knows that whatever it is to him now—he hadn't had one.

It's Anne—he could say anything to her and no matter how bad her initial reaction, he'd thought that she'd eventually accept the fact that he no longer has any ties to Avonlea, but instead he had found himself saying, "I will.")

It sounds like a promise, the way that he _had_ said it—all careful and firm, as if he was to carve it into stone immediately the next day. Gilbert pulls his hand away from the grass and wishes he could make that kind of promise now, wishes she was there for him to make a promise to—but alas. He walks on quietly, and lets the memories wash over him.

("You look beautiful," Gilbert says, and _means_ it—Winnie _is_ beautiful, and that's what had stunned him when he'd first met her—but as he takes her hand he catches the fleeting thought that reminds him that she deserves someone who would write poetry about her and her delicate curls and starched dresses, lets it fall free with a small exhale that no one hears over the music and laughter.)

He aches thinking of having to constantly live with Winnie; she is fiercely loyal and accepting and funny, but that would not be enough for her to be able to comfort Gilbert when he was to inevitably fall back into grief or pain in the career he's chosen. He would have to stay blank and kind and content with what he was given while not being able to break down in any presence other than the Lacroix's, perhaps Diana's, but never _Anne's,_ and all any of it would do would remind him of what a mistake he'd made or what he regretted or—

Gilbert shakes the thoughts off and firmly sets his focus on his surroundings; he's in the woods now, his thoughts a torrentuous wave though quiet as this place may be. He feels his eyebrows furrow as he catches sight of a strangely settled pile of wood, and upon closer examination finds it to perhaps be the ruins of a wooden shack, and sculptures made of clay—broken in half and scattered around the clearing—surround it solemnly. Gilbert finds signs when he looks up from the pile—Anne's handwriting in white paint, the same as on her sign from their Free Speech revolt, spell out the name of a story-writing club and the dates of its organization and demolition.

He smiles fondly, and picks up the seashell that he finds—it has the air of Anne about it, and it's beautiful, and—

Gilbert finds himself at the edge of a cliff overlooking the beach in a breath of an exhale and feels her presence right beside him. He doesn't—can't—turn to look, his eyes worn from seeing things that are never reality, but he hears her voice anyway.

"It's not what the world holds for you," she says with force as Anne always does, her voice tired from screaming and crying and all manners of things that Gilbert doesn't know, "It's what _you_ bring to it."

Her eyes are bright and her hair is a mess of fire and flames he will never forget; her gaze meets his over a crowd, dress robin-egg blue and everything she could be back then; she tip-toes at the edge of the lake with a light tune spilling from her lips; she beams at Gilbert, her happiness something that stems from whatever he'd said last, and she-he-they are in love.

Gilbert remembers her article and her voice and eyes and the warmth of her fingers, and knows.

He _knows._

 _Women are not made whole by men,_ she had written and hit the point perfectly—the memory sparks a soft smile and the same feeling of overflowing triumph from that day that he lets wash over him—and yet he'd be willing to propose a gender-switch, for women are certainly not made whole by men but Gilbert knows that without her in his life he would have not even a life to begin with.

Mary had told him to marry for love and only for love, on a day that feels so often far away and sometimes close enough that he can feel her gentle kiss on his brow as she whispers, "And don't let yourself settle if _anything_ sits wrong in your gut, Gilbert."

"Winnifred is lovely and her parents are too," Gilbert says aloud to the ocean and the wide-open sky. "But Winnie deserves someone who loves her devotedly—with their whole heart; she deserves someone who would give her the world if she'd have it. And I am devoted to—I am _in love with_ —someone else."

His words fade into the salty air even as he says it, and yet he feels them mark his soul.

"I'm in love with Anne," he says, "And I can't propose to Winnie."

Gilbert turns from the ocean and spares himself a deep breath for the long and tumultuous journey ahead.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading and please drop a kudos or a comment down below, it always makes my day :)


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